What's New Archive

On Thursday, April 2nd, NOAA/PMEL Director Chris Sabine will discuss NOAA’s role in detecting ocean acidification and measuring community vulnerability to understand risk during Sound Conversations at the Seattle Aquarium. The Seattle Aquarium hosted the 3rd phase of the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE aimed at developing affordable and accurate pH sensors. As a leader in ocean acidification research and detection, NOAA/PMEL scientists are providing validation measurements for the XPRIZE contest. By developing breakthrough ocean pH sensors, researchers, fisheries and resource managers, and environmental groups throughout the world will be able to measure ocean acidification in more places and with better resolution to increase the understanding of the risk ocean acidification poses to shellfish, coral reefs, and fisheries. This event is aimed at bringing the ocean acidification community together to learn about new innovative approaches to addressing ocean acidification from leaders in research, policy, and public engagement.

Visit the PMEL Carbon Group page to learn more about research on ocean acidification.

Philippe Cousteau joined researchers from PMEL and UW/JISAO at the Seattle Aquarium, where Phase 3 of the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE contest was wrapping up this weekend. Following one month of data collection, the 14 teams' pH sensors were removed from a flow tank filled with Puget Sound seawater, and the data were downloaded.

The $2M Ocean Health XPRIZE is a competition to create accurate and affordable pH sensors that can be used around the globe. The development of this technology, which will help scientists map and characterize ocean chemistry globally, is of utmost importance as ocean acidification (a change in seawater chemistry resulting from CO2 absorption) is expected to impact the health of a number of vulnerable ecosystems around the world including coral reefs, shellfish, and fisheries.

The age of Arctic sea ice can be determined using satellite observations and drifting buoy records to track the movement of ice floes, and can be a rough indicator for ice thickness.

This NOAA PMEL animation shows the age of the ice at the end of each winter since 1987. Paler colors indicate older ice, with light blue indicating 4-year ice to white indicating very old ice.

In the 1980’s, 26% of the Arctic winter ice pack consisted of thick ice built up over multiple years. After 2007, older ice diminishes rapidly and is replaced by younger ice. Starting in 2011, very old ice remains only along the Canadian coast.

The Submarine Ring of Fire ’14 cruise is completed and PMEL scientists are back in the lab analyzing the data. While underway, 19 short videos were created by Saskia Madlener with music by Charlie Brooks. Take a look at the videos to get a sense of what life on the ship was like and how the scientists dealt with successes and challenges at sea. Despite problematic weather, the scientists were able to get biological, chemical, geological and acoustic data over the duration of the cruise, using hydrographic instruments and the remotely operated vehicle Jason.

The NOAA-led Arctic Report Card was released today. The annual assessment of change in the Arctic shows the region continues to outpace the rest of the globe in response to climate change, warming at twice the rate of anywhere else on earth.

The report documents changes in air temperature, sea surface temperature, snow cover, sea ice extent, the Greenland ice sheet, ocean productivity, and vegetation over the tundra. A special addition this year includes an assessment of polar bear population dynamics in several different regions of the Arctic.

On November 29th, 2014, 11 PMEL, JISAO, and CIMRS scientists embarked on an exciting journey aboard the R/V Roger Revelle to revisit the Submarine Ring of Fire. Located west of the Mariana trench, the mission will visit NW Eifuku and NW Rota, two active hydrothermal systems where scientists will examine the emission of carbon dioxide as it provides a natural laboratory to observe and measure how ocean acidification can affect marine ecosystems. The cruise is funded by NSF and NOAA's Ocean Exploration and Research program.

Follow along with the scientists on the Ocean Explorer website where mission logs will be updated regularly.

The NSF-funded Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the NPRB-funded Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP), with in-kind contributions from NOAA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, have shed light on ecosystem dynamics and how the region may respond to climate change. In particular, researchers found that when and where the sea ice extends are major factors that determine productivity and impact the entire ecosystem of the Bering Sea. To find out more information about these exciting programs, visit the EcoFOCI and BEST-BSIERP websites.

PMEL’s Earth-Ocean Interactions program led by Oregon State University Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies scientist, Dr. Bill Chadwick, has just launched a new blog aimed at analyzing and forecasting when the next eruption at Axial Seamount might occur. Axial Seamount is the most active submarine volcano in the NE Pacific. Located on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Oregon, it was chosen as the site of the world's first underwater volcano observatory called NeMO and is now a node on the new Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) cabled observatory. Axial erupted most recently in 1998 and 2011.

Scientists from PMEL, Oregon State University, and University of North Carolina at Wilmington will be monitoring Axial closely. Watch the blog for forecast updates.

PMEL and Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientists have observed and sampled a large coccolithophore bloom, viewable even from space, in the Eastern Bering Sea during a recent October EcoFOCI research cruise. This phytoplankton bloom is caused by the coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, a one-celled marine algae with calcite plating, and has persisted for nearly three months, starting in July 2014. Blooms of this size and duration have not been seen for over a decade in the Bering Sea.

The satellite image from September 26 shows the aquamarine bloom with the white circles indicating sampling stations occupied by NOAA’s research vessel Oscar Dyson during the cruise. For more information please visit the EcoFOCI cruise website.

Scientists from PMEL and JISAO took off on NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter P3 aircraft on October 2 from Seattle, Washington heading to Fairbanks, Alaska to take part in 5 flight missions to measure heat flux coming from the Arctic Ocean. This is the second year in a row scientists have flown above Arctic waters. Data gathered from both years to test the hypothesis that increased summer heat storage in the newly sea-ice free ocean regions in the Arctic lead to surface heat fluxes in autumn that are large enough to have impacts on atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind and cloud distributions.